NOW, INFY PAYS LIP SERVICE
NOW, INFY PAYS LIP SERVICE
Growth in lifestyle and consumer spending has compelled Infosys to develop cutting-edge consumer technology in retail and telecom space. One such technology for the retail space is Smart Visual Merchandising (SVM) based on radio frequency or RFID tags. It has already been deployed on mounted display panels at a retail fashion clothing store inside the Infosys campus in Bangalore. The company is conducting seven pilots on all the solutions, primarily in the US focusing on retail, healthcare and cosmetics segment. They are currently in talks to Indian retail players for the same as well. Here`s how the technology works: Passive RFID tags (a small circuit on a paper) each costing about Rs 10 are laid inside shirt or trouser packs. When a potential customer selects a shirt and brings it near a LCD panel, it displays all features of the shirt be it colour name, striped /checked, size, along with other sizes available in the same colour and their prices. The technology comes handy inside a trial room. A touch on a display unit inside the trial orders a bigger/ smaller size at the counter, and a helper can hand over the same, thus saving time for both customer as well as the retailer. The technology also helps in building analytics and market research for a product or a brand. For instance, if customers spend time at a particular shelf or a product, but don`t buy it, the feedback helps generate the consumer response to a particular flavour or colour. Reliance Retail has developed five RFID-deployment scenarios, which include tracking of reusable crates of fresh food, item and case-level tracking of high-value goods, pallet and case tagging of various goods. Some shelves at Pantaloon`s Food Bazaar store inside the Infosys campus also carry RFID tags to help build analytical data about a particular flavour, size or price of a product vis a vis it`s competitors kept on the same shelf. Similarly in a large grocery retail chain, replenishment can be ordered instantly with vendors and suppliers when a particular shelf is running out of stock. You can also feed in a recipes and the system will automatically order all the ingredients in the right quantity. Infosys Software Engineering and Testing (SET) Labs has developed a wireless sensor technology based on motes - small battery operated sensors. These motes can be embedded or stuck on any surface like a pipe in a manufacturing setup, a data centre, or an oil tank. It can monitor and wirelessly transfer data such as temperature, pressure, humidity etc to a nearby mobile device within a range of 100 meters. The mobile device can then transfer it to other devices thus creating a mesh network. Thus sitting at home, one can monitor the temperature inside a gas pipe in your factory from your mobile device.
 
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